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Brent Bradley considered himself to be in good shape. He worked out regularly at a local gym in Ottawa, and played drop-in hockey three times a week.

Then, one period into a hockey game in November 2011, Bradley collapsed to the ice in front of his goalie, felled by a sudden heart attack that left him without vital signs for three minutes.

“I likened it to the feeling and sound of an elevator running out of electricity and stopping,” said Bradley, now 62.

“One second I was playing hockey, and the next I was meeting St. Peter.”

He regained consciousness after a firefighter on the opposing team shocked his heart back to life with the arena’s defibrillator. He discovered the arteries around his heart were severely clogged, and underwent quadruple bypass surgery to save his life.

“I was very, very, very lucky,” said Bradley, who returned to play hockey in September.

Stories like this are routinely passed around casual hockey leagues across the country. The sum of such anecdotes might hint at an underlying danger to drop-in hockey. Or it might simply represent what happens when middle aged people push themselves too hard on the ice.

Perhaps surprisingly in a hockey-mad nation like Canada, the issue has received scant scientific scrutiny.

“A lot of middle-aged men play pickup hockey, and a lot of them have heart attacks,” said Jack Goodman, associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Clinical Cardiovascular Research Laboratory.

“We have virtually no information on what that cardiovascular response is during hockey,”

To help address that deficiency, Goodman’s son Zack, a master’s student in exercise science, is spearheading a study for his thesis that aims to chart how middle-aged men’s heart rates and blood pressure behave while playing hockey.

Zack’s hypothesis — as well as his father’s — is that the risk of heart problems might be especially acute because of the strenuous stop-and-go nature of the game.

Previous studies have suggested such exercise could be risky. Last year, a Queen’s University professor surveyed heart attacks over two previous winters in Kingston, and found that 7 per cent occurred while the patient was shovelling snow.

“The stopping suddenly is probably less dangerous than the starting suddenly,” said Paul D. Thompson, a sports cardiology expert from Hartford, Md. “You’re more likely to get that spasm of the arteries when you start quickly … (But) there aren’t a ton of studies on sudden death during exercise.”

On a recent Tuesday night at Phil White Arena in northern Toronto, Marc Koplawitz was suiting up to play hockey. The 53-year-old agreed to participate in Zack’s study, and was outfitted with electrical nodes on his chest, as well as a band around his left bicep, so that a machine could chart his blood pressure and heart rate.

“I’m always in favour of research; if I can help out without donating an organ,” Koplawitz said, joking as Zack taped down the wires connected to a small computer latched on the back of Koplawitz’s hockey pants.

Once the game got going, the defenceman came to the bench after each shift, where Zack took note of the reading on the machine attached beneath his jersey. Koplawitz then sat down for 30 seconds, and Zack took a second reading.

The 23-year-old grad student said he wanted to learn more about what happens during the drop in blood pressure that occurs when players suddenly stop their rapid movements to sit on the bench.

He suspects that “less healthy” players will be more susceptible to heart problems at this stage. They will have faster heart rates that take longer to slow down, which can result in less oxygen being fed to the muscles of the heart, Zack explained.

“That’s actually where there is risk of less perfusion to the heart — 30 seconds after they’ve sat down,” he said.

He hopes to have his thesis finished by June, but cautions that his study is merely the scientific equivalent of testing the waters in an under-examined area.

“We’re trying to look at the characteristics that might lead to risk,” he said.

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